Key Takeaways
- Busta Rhymes called streaming payouts disrespectful, arguing that compensating artists with "fractions of a penny" devalues their work.
- He said the industry cannot meaningfully improve until platforms pay creators more, echoing T-Pain’s concerns about how artists can audit such tiny royalties.
- To diversify his income, Busta distributes music beyond streaming through vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and other ways of monetizing his intellectual property.
Busta Rhymes has spoken out about the poor residuals artists receive from streaming services.
In an interview with Yahoo! Finance, Busta, who just recently released Dillagence II, his collaborative mixtape with the late J Dilla, discussed how much the music industry has changed since he made his debut in the early '90s.
Asked about how a musician makes a profitable record in the modern era, Busta suggested that it’s still a work in progress for the industry as a whole. "I don’t think we’ve figured that part out yet, unfortunately, in the way that business is being done today,” he said around the nine-minute mark of the interview above. "That’s something that we’re still all having conversations about."
He continued: "I'm talking about us as artists, producers, amongst our peers. We’re all facing a very similar frustration with streaming. It's imperative that I find a way to respect the value of the artist and the artist’s creations."
Spotify, which has the largest user base globally, has been frequently called out for how little it pays out to artists per stream. It is estimated that the platform pays out between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, as reported by the Royalty Exchange. While that’s low, YouTube Music is reported to pay out even less, with $0.001 to $0.002 per stream. For comparison, Apple Music pays out between $0.007 and $0.01 per stream, while Tidal pays out between $0.013 and $0.015 per stream.
Busta was then asked if he thinks the industry will ever get to a place where artists are making more money on streaming. "Would you accept anyone telling you, like it was a respectful conversation, and not feel like your intelligence was being insulted by saying, 'We’re going to compensate you for what you do, a fraction of a penny,'" he replied. "Would you accept a conversation and feel like that’s a conversation that you can respect from anyone?"
Busta added that he doesn’t think that there’s going to be any major changes in the music industry until streaming services start paying artists they're profiting off of more. "I don’t think that until they can fix that," he said. "I put the music on the platform, but I make sure that I’m putting it many other places outside of the platform. You do your vinyls, you do CDs, you do your cassettes… It’s just a lot of other ways to monetize your intellectual property."
During the interview, he said that he heard T-Pain talk about the lack of money to be made from streaming and agreed with his take. "They don’t even have a name for the currency that is called fractions of a penny, 'cause that name and that currency doesn’t actually exist," he added. "But then they want to pay you that… Like, how do you audit a fraction of a penny?”
